Inherited War 3: Retaliation (47 page)

“Brother!”
Splits other half returned as suddenly as he had left.

“What? How bad is it?”
he answered back.

“Bad, very bad. I was unable to get to the defenders but they just wore down the shield. The last strike destroyed the city and the Roche are moving massive machines in to clear the radiation from the ground and begin their assault on the underground. There are millions, tens of millions, on the plains north of the capitol. They can flood the underground with more soldiers than the Nixa can repel.”
Split rocked back on his heels. They were too late and had too few assets. If the Roche made it into the underground before the shield could come down, then the fleet would be useless. He had counted on the ships thinning the horde out considerably.

Split looked at his monitor; he paused for a moment and pushed the spheres output to the red line. They had heavy-duty generators and propulsion, but they still couldn’t last forever on such a high output. They calculated how much radiation the shields and the planets magnetosphere could absorb or deflect and pushed the spheres further apart to cover more territory. They set a threshold line in space. The closest the Nomads planet could get to the Nixa homeworld without it being sucked in to far or both tearing each other apart. They would have to figure out a way to nudge the planet away when this was over but for now a few thousand miles would have to do.

Still, he would keep the spheres running nonstop because none of it mattered if the shields never came down from around the planet. They protected it from a dying sun, what could their fleet hope to accomplish. Hell, if they couldn’t contact the ground forces, they would never even knew they had arrived. The fleet was on standby and Split was frustrated, it wasn’t until two days had passed that they came up with an idea. They told Glendale about it.

“What is that supposed to accomplish?” Glendale asked.

“No one should be up here but us. If it was the enemy, they would be going all-out, not a rhythmic pounding. We need a way to let the ground forces know we are here. If we fire the biggest burst we can on a several second delay, they may be able to see it, especially at night,” Split explained. He hated having to explain things to anyone; he preferred to be in charge.

“Okay, I’m convinced,” Glendale said and relayed the order to the fleet. “Every ten seconds, hit the shield with the largest brightest shot you can, and continue until the shield drops or orders come down to stop.”  Now someone had to notice it and would know the allied fleet had finally returned, so that they would shut off the shield.

They dropped down the shaft by the thousands and their bodies piled up just as fast. The auto turrets in the entry room fired nonstop. At one point, Cole swapped out with a Nixa behind him so he could rest for a few moments and get some food into his belly. Two days had passed since the initial breech attempt, and Cole had manned the firing position the whole time. The Nixa with him had each gone down from minor wounds and been replaced by others. Every few hours they rotated out and got fresh bodies on the line, except for Cole and Jeth. They had lost track of how many Roche had died in the shaft or in the entry room, the targeting could no longer distinguish much of anything in that room.

Bodies and parts of bodies smoldered from the heavy plasma fire pouring into it from the three hallways. Almost half of the turrets had either been taken out or melted down from the sheer amount of plasma they were putting downrange. The Roche had made it halfway into the room in two days before their advance stalled out. Now the room was so full of bodies, they were forced to remove them to move forward.

Cole was sitting with his back to the wall, listening to the sporadic fire from the Nixa as they sought to hit the Roche shifting the bodies around. He was dead tired, his nanites and advanced biology went a long way in keeping him awake and lucid, but he was pushing their limits. There was no substitute for sleep, unfortunately. The outgoing fire slowed then died all together. Cole turned the gain up on his external mic. There was a dripping sound he hadn’t noticed before.

“Cole, something’s coming,” Jeth announced and Cole rolled to his knees and slid forward, relieving the Nixa that had been holding his spot. Cole peeked around the edge of the steel shield and looked into the room. The Roche had given up on attempting to shift the bodies around and had retreated from the room. There as a steady flow of liquid dripping down the open elevator shaft. Suddenly the trickle became a steady stream and the floor of the entry room was slowly being coated by the stuff. Cole had a bad feeling about what it might be.

“Everyone back, push back to the next position,” he ordered. Quickly everyone responded, but he and Jeth remained behind. Cole watched as a small rivulet of the liquid channeled by the bodies slowly made its way to his position. When it was close enough, he reached out, dipped his finger in the stuff and waited for his suit to analyze its makeup. Just as his suit was reporting that it was a highly flammable chemical that did not require oxygen to burn, a torrent of the stuff poured from the shaft. Cole was up and screaming at Jeth to move and for everyone to fall back further.

The explosion as the stuff burst into flames picked Cole up and slammed him into the back of Jeth. Jeth grunted, reached behind himself and picked Cole up with one hand, and continued his lumbering flight to the next position. The hallway quickly filled with dark oily smoke from the burning corpses piled high in the entry room.

“I’m okay. Put me down,” Cole coughed out after he regained his breath. He had suffered nothing worse than losing his breath when he slammed into Jeth. Jeth obliged and they continued onto the next rally point. Their forces were split up for good now. By retreating from the entry room and abandoning their second choke point, they now had no more than ten intersections to defend. The Roche had their foothold, now the real battle began. Cole was through though. His nanites screamed at him to sleep and they needed to take care of some miner bruising from his brief flight that ended with him slamming into Jeth. He turned the defense over to the local squad leader with orders to wake him in four hours. Cole collapsed in a room off the main corridor and his nanites put him to sleep instantly. The true nightmare of this battle had just begun.

Cole lost track of time. He turned off his HUD clock and relied on his nanites to tell him when to eat, sleep, and drink. His time awake was filled with smoky nightmarish scenes of death and destruction. Roche used bodies as shields as they thrust deeper into the complex. There were bright flashes of plasma weapons all around him and the dull thuds of explosions going off as they collapsed tunnels on top of the enemy. Through it all, Jeth remained at his side. Occasionally Sky would come forward with the medics and attended to any minor wounds he had. Those times were few and far between and scared the shit out of Cole. He always made Sky promise to never come back, but to stay near the tunnel to the next city. She always promised, then was back the next time she could come.

Finally, the worst happened. Something that Cole had never counted on them doing. Something they hadn’t prepared for simply because it seemed impossible with the time it took. The Roche made a separate tunnel from above. They dug through hundreds of feet of topsoil and through tons of bedrock to infiltrate the center of the city. Cole and his forces were cut off from the retreat to the next city. They had one place they could fall back to, the surface. They were down to only having to defend two hallways, but his force was small.  He had exactly twelve thousand and thirteen soldiers at his back. A force that small would be swallowed by the still much larger surface force of Roche. They had no choice. Millions of Roche were now pouring in from the initial entry point and the breech in the center. The other force of a few hundred thousand, he had ordered to fall back to the tunnel and evacuate to the next city, leaving a token force behind to hold the tunnel and bring it down when the last train was gone. Suicide, but plenty had volunteered for the job.

Now, he was backed up to the secret exit of this tunnel. Both of his hallways converged just before the final door and his two forces were linked up and still fighting the delaying action. They had the advantage of the high ground this time and used it as best they could. They broke water mains and flooded as much of the hallways as they could, but all it took was the Roche opening up the right door to drain it all out. His men were low on food, water, and ammo. They were headed from the frying pan into the fire.

“We can last here a few more hours. I’m going top side to see what’s waiting out there for us.” Jeth grunted as he continued to lay down fire. Cole was replaced by a Nixa and he hustled through the crowd to the exit. He arrived at the door and waited a moment.

“Fuck it,” he said and hit the open switch. The ceiling slid away revealing an eerily bluish night sky. The shield was still up, that was something anyway. He poked his head up and peered around.

“About god damned time,” West’s voice said from just a few feet away from Cole’s face. Cole jumped and turned, pointing his weapon at where the voice had come from.

“Calm down, it’s just me.” West turned off his suit’s camouflage and suddenly appeared no more than two feet from Cole.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Cole shouted at him.

“Well, when a stream of fleeing Nixa came into the city, you sent me too. Talking about a breach and getting separated. I had to know what was going on. I brought some friends along as well.” Cole climbed all the way out of the exit and looked at where West was pointing. Not more than a quarter of a mile away, on top of a bald hill, Cole saw a defensive line of Worlders digging into the side of the hill.

“It’s no use,” Cole said, switching to a frequency only West could hear. “We can’t hold them down there and we are toast up here. Shit.” Cole dropped his helmet and sucked in a breath of fresh air. The wind blew cool on his face.

“I would put that back on if I were you,” West said. “There is a fair bit of radiation around here. Our suits can handle it, but I wouldn’t want to hear the nanites nagging me about taking too high of a dose.” Cole sighed and resealed his suit.

“Jeth, set the charges and collapse the tunnels. Everyone out of the hole and head to the hill to the north west.” Cole and West stood to the side as Nixa suddenly bolted by the hundreds and thousands from the hole in the ground. A small team stayed at each hallway to hold off the advance while the charges were set. Jeth was the last one out, and the ground erupted in a massive explosion shortly afterward. Jeth, West, and Cole hustled to the fortifications. Worlders were working hard to put up the portable shielding and dig themselves below ground level in a final effort to hold out.

Cole collapsed at the very top of the hill. His back was to the hole they had just crawled out of.

“Did Sky make it out?” he asked West.

“Yeah, she and her sister made it out,” West said. Cole turned on his HUD’s clock; thirty minutes till sunrise. A second, larger explosion rocked the ground from behind them.

“The Roche just found the door,” West said and pointed back the way they had come. Slowly, Cole turned and looked. He saw two things. First, he saw Roche boiling up out of the ground like oil, and then he saw the dark blanket slowly covering the ground to the south. Then he noticed a third slightly more odd thing in the sky.

“Yeah, weird huh? It started a few days ago. Every few seconds, a bright light flashes in the sky. We figured it was radiation whacking into the shield or something.

“Turn it off!” Cole shouted into the all hands net. “Turn the god damn shield off now!” he screamed. “Our fucking ships are here and you’ve kept them locked out. Dead—I will kill you all if those shields don’t come down now.” Before he could finish speaking, the teams that had been left behind to watch over the shield generators activated their remote self-destructs that had been installed prior to the mission. The shield fell instantly, and Cole found himself looking into a night sky as it slowly changed to day.

The rising sun illuminated the hordes of Roche swarming over the plains toward their position. Time seemed to slow as his com system came alive with Split’s voice.

“Get down. Find any cover you can!” he screamed into Cole’s ear. Everyone heard and dove for the shallow fighting positions. Fire rained from the sky and hundreds of landing crafts broke into the atmosphere at the same time. Drone fighters screamed through the thick air of the planet and began strafing the dense crowd of Roche.

The ground shook as the first massive plasma balls impacted into the earth. Tens of thousands of Roche died with each passing second. It was enough to stop them from reaching the hill, and it gave Cole a fighting chance. Cole ordered the Worlders to break cover and defend their positions.

Cole fired until he was out of ammunition, and then found himself swinging his weapon like a club. The great starships couldn’t fire on the enemy so close to Cole’s position, but they kept working on those farther away. The Roche mixed in with the defenders, and soon hand-to-hand combat was the only way they could fight. Just behind the defenders, the transports landed and began to disgorge the hundreds of thousands of Nomads whose planet now orbited around the Nixa homeworld. Cole had seen the giant red moon just behind the fleet overhead, but it hadn’t clicked that Nixa never had a moon before. The dwarvish Nomads filled the ranks of the defenders and tore into the Roche with abandon. Cole managed to snatch a long sharpened piece of metal from a downed Roche. It was almost like a sword but had no grip or cross guard. There were a few inches of unsharpened steel where he could grip it comfortably in one hand. He felt someone thrust a blaster into his other. He looked down and saw a—well, the only way he could describe it was a dwarf. He looked just like Cole thought a dwarf should look. Short, wider than he was tall, with heavy muscles and shiny armor plates covering his body. He fought with a short pickax-turned-weapon in one hand and a heavy plasma blaster in the other.